For exchanging data via networks, particularly via the Internet, data protocols are being used to control the data flow. One new protocol that is currently being widely adapted throughout the industry is “SOAP”, i.e. “Simple Object Access Protocol”. Although the “SOAP” protocol is layered on top of HTTP, it is not primarily intended for direct use from within a browser environment but instead is a generic HTTP tunneled RPC (remote procedure call) mechanism to be used, for example, from within a programming environment such as a Java virtual machine which may be invoked through the browser environments through servlets.
In fact, current Web browser environments are not capable of sending or receiving SOAP messages from a Web page. Therefore, it is necessary to use Java Applets, JavaScript, Plug-ins or Active X components in order to handle SOAP messages. While this is may be acceptable in a common desktop environment, it is unacceptable for Web browsers on simple devices, such as Palm Pilots or cell phones.
In particular, three problems can be identified with the current behavior of standard Web browsers with regard to SOAP in such environments; namely the required SOAP header fields that are not commonly used or generated by Web browsers, the encoding of the SOAP request itself, which is unlike those requests generated by Web browsers, and the generation of markup content from the SOAP response that can be displayed in the browser.
The world wide Web includes a number of servers hosting HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) accessible data which can be transmitted to client programs (i.e. Web browsers), utilizing the hypertext transfer protocol via an Internet protocol (IP) connection between a client device and a server hosting device. As the data stored on the servers has to be in a specific format to be displayed (for example, the format known as the hypertext markup language—HTML), other data available on the server cannot be displayed in a browser environment without additional means.
It is therefore an objective of the present invention to enable Web browsers for simple portable or mobile devices to generate SOAP messages and to mark up SOAP responses and thus, enable them to include the increasing number of SOAP-accessible contents available via the Internet.